13. Speak on leadership and management challenges and power bases in organizational environment. What makes a leader effective/ineffective? Support your answer with examples.

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

The new leadership and management challenges are not without internal contradic­tions. On the one hand, the imperative is to move to group and team self-leadership; on the other hand, if necessary, leaders are exhorted to singularly risk the future to motivate follower commitment. Leadership is described as both a lonely and a highly participative endeavor. The increasing complexity of a technologically connected global environment places new demands on leaders and managers. Ellen Van Velsor and Jean Brittain Leslie (1995), in reviewing studies of why executives derail (have negative outcomes), identified four primary themes enduring over time and across countries. According to Van Velsor and Leslie, executives derailed because they were challenged by (1) problems with interpersonal relationships, (2) failure to meet busi­ness objectives, (3) failure to build and lead a team, and (4) inability to change or adapt during a transition. Jim Collins (2009) suggests leaders and organizations who decline exhibit five general stages of decline: (1) hubris born of past success; (2) undis­ciplined pursuit of more in almost all categories, including profit; (3) denial of pend­ing risks and peril; (4) grasping for solutions or, as Collins suggests, salvation; and (5) giving in to irrelevance or final endings.

14. Speak on communication tactics and constructive communication behaviours that leaders are recommended to exercise. Support your answer with examples.

Communication Tactics for Leadership

Leadership tactics can be described as the communication behaviors used to sup­port authoritarian, participative, and avoidance preferences as well as to establish vision, manage meaning, generate trust, and communicate regard and success ori­entations. Specific tactics are influenced by individual preferences and strategies, by communication competencies of leaders and followers, and by overall orga­nizational values and expectations about how leadership works. Military organi­zations, for example, encourage authoritarian leadership, whereas organizations involved in research and development of new products usually stress more partici­pative approaches. Still others reflect a mix of leadership processes representing the diversity of people and personalities who work together. It is important to un­derstand that as with most tactics, the choice of specific leadership tactics illus­trates the interactive nature of relationships. Both leaders and followers are involved in complex tactical interactions influenced by individual preferences and strategic objectives as well as the needs of a particular situation.

It is not possible to list or define all the communication tactics available to po­tential leaders. It is useful for our personal sensitivity and our skills to identify sev­eral frequently used communication tactics. Figure 1 presents excerpts from group problem-solving discourses in which the identified group leader illustrates a particular leadership tactic. Each example is accompanied by a description of the tactic it represents, and tactics are grouped into authoritarian, participative, avoid­ance, vision-setting, meaning-management, trust-generating, and positive regard and success categories.

Leadership Tactics

Authoritarian Tactics

1. Blocking ideas by establishing responsibility.

2. Controlling the process of events

3. Announcing goals without consultation

4. Pushing opposition through sanctions or withholding support.

Participative Tactics

1. Seeking ideas from all involved.

2. Facilitating group process that encourage participation.

3. Encouraging disagreement when constructive and solution –oriented

4. Seeking idea evaluation

5. Verbalizing consensus among group members

Avoidance Tactics

1. Ignoring conflict even when obvious

2. Changing subject when disagreements or difficulty seem obvious

3. Agreeing with others to avoid conflict or new ideas

4. Refusing responsibility for motivating others to action

Vision-Setting Tactics

1. Visualizing abstract ideas by symbolic association

2. Stating desired outcomes without undue emphasis on details

3. Articulating reasons for actions and goals

Meaning-Management Tactics

1. Soliciting feedback to understand message clarity and impact

2. Generating symbolism to interpret events and accomplishments

3. Managing messages to support exchanges of meaning

Trust-Generating Tactics

1. Communicating constancy by linking present messages to past actions

2. Identifying values and relating values to needed action

3. Encouraging access through planned communication interactions

Positive Regard and Success Tactics

1. Providing support for individual effort.

2. Offering praise for efforts

3. Avoiding blame and seeking solutions

4. Identifying challenges and opportunities when others see problems

15. Speak on the conflict context, conflict causes, conflict episodes and possible conflict styles and strategies for resolving conflicts. How would you deal with a conflict situation in your virtual organization?

Conflict can be described as a process that occurs when individu­als, small groups, or organizations perceive or experience frustra­tion in attaining goals and addressing concerns. At times this frustration is the result of a struggle over different values or scarce rewards, whereas other times the central issue is the status or power of involved individuals. Regardless of the reasons, for all conflict partici­pants the process includes perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and outcomes.

Conflict Contexts

Conflict can occur in any organizational setting in which there are two or more competing responses to a single event. In other words, conflict can occur in any context: intrapersonal, interpersonal, small-group, intergroup, or organization-wide or between the organization and its broader environment.

The conflict context influences the conflict symptoms, behaviors, and outcomes. Intrapersonal conflict, for example, is not readily observable through overt behaviors; an individual experiencing internal conflict may not discuss the problem. Yet he or she may be observed to be under pressure or generally in a bad mood. These observa­tions are indirect symptoms of the intrapersonal conflict. When John begins to wonder about his assumptions regarding Tom and Joan and to doubt his decision about the computer system, he may begin to experience intrapersonal conflict common to us all when our perceptions differ from those around us and when our judgments are called into question. Furthermore, because John is the manager, it will be difficult for him to take a wait-and-see attitude while letting others resolve the problem.

The conflict between John and Joan is a good example of the interpersonal context for organizational conflict. John is excited about his job and the opportunity to put into practice his training on the new system. Although he can understand Joan wanted his job, he isn't prepared for her resistance to change. He believes she is frustrated because she was not promoted and thus discounts her concerns about his lack of understanding of the department. He also links Tom's warning about people leaving the claims area to an attempt by Joan to undermine his efforts. Joan, on the other hand, sees John as another example of a powerful manager moving too quickly without sufficient background. In addition, neither really trusts the other's motives.

As in the interpersonal setting, conflict in the small-group context can be observed through behaviors during the conflict and by the conflict's lasting effects. The productive or destructive outcomes of conflict often are evidenced in the amount of group cohesion and productivity a team exhibits long after the actual conflict has ended.

The contexts for organizational conflict are not limited, however, to interpersonal or small-group exchanges. Two separate organizational units may conflict over priorities in providing resources to each other, or an entire organization appear to be in conflict over the fairness of pay and benefit plans. The organization-wide context, in actuality, is interpersonal, small-group, and intergroup conflict simultaneously addressing the same event or issue. Finally, the context of organization's conflict with others—its competition, the public, the stockholders, the government—illustrates both how complex and how necessary conflict is for organizational functioning. U.S.A. automobiles and foreign competition, airline mergers and oil company mergers, concern for nuclear accidents and hazardous waste disposal, and competitive approaches to advertising and marketing are a few examples of conflicts between organizations and their environment.

Conflict Causes

Circumstances contributing to conflict and the causes of conflict proliferate as the pace of organizational change intensifies. Companies and individuals must adapt to global competition or changes in local situations with scarce resources, both financial and human. Competition for resources exists between units within organizations, among individuals with different agendas, and between and among organizations. Heavy workloads put conflicting time demands on employees at all organizational levels. The increasing complexity of organizational life generates conflicts, as does the use of increasingly sophisticated technologies. While technology use can be positive, groups working together with technology and without face-to-face contact may more readily engage in assigning blame to group members without taking personal responsibility.

How organizations handle and value dissent during decision making contributes to norms of how to handle conflict. Organizations that encourage dissent during decision making generally experience more productive conflict than those that prefer limited disagreement or participation. In addition, all organizations have as employees, customers, or vendors or are in alliances with people who exhibit dif­ficult behaviors contributing to conflict. Dealing with difficult people is indeed one of the most frequent tests of our organizational conflict skills.

Most organizations experience tensions due to the many paradoxes, contradic­tions, and ironies in organizational life. We become aware that irrationality is a normal condition of organizational life. Yet paradoxes, contradictions, and ironies can contribute to conflict when handled poorly.

The conditions and causes of conflict discussed so far contribute to what many describe as a rise in incivility in the workplace and in some cases increased aggression and violence. Workplace civility has generally been conceptualized as courteous treatment of coworkers and other contacts. It includes treating others with dignity, regarding others' feelings, and using social norms of mutual respect. Incivility, on the ether hand, is characterized by intent to harm either specific individuals or the or­ganization. Incivility manifests itself in behaviors that demean the dignity of others and violate broad social norms of mutual respect. The diversity of the workforce, in­cluding diverse cultural backgrounds, makes understanding broad social norms of mutual respect increasingly complex. As a result, intended and unintended incivilities increase. Civility and incivility take place through human communication interaction and overt behaviors.

Also contributing to the opportunity for conflict are the various ways in which deception occurs within organizations. Anne Hubbell and Caryn Medved (2000) described three deception perspectives: information distortion, strategic ambiguity and complete distortion or lying. Information distortion is a process of modifying messages to receivers. The second per­spective, strategic ambiguity, focuses on the purposeful use of vague language so that receivers can interpret a message from diverse perspectives. Again, although ambiguous messages may permit more people with different views to identify with a particular position, the lack of common understanding has the potential for con­flict. Finally, lies, deceit, deception, and concealment are behaviors with obvious potential to produce conflict. They often can be characterized as serious ethical abuses.

Certain types of jobs are characterized by the conflicting and stressful situa­tions that are a routine part of the work. For example, leaders are charged with bringing about change and often encounter serious disagreements about courses of appropriate action. Other jobs require people to respond directly to emergences and crises, whether from customers, the public at large, or within their specific or­ganizations. Still others must adopt a service attitude even in the face of abusive behavior. Arlie Hochschild (1983) used the term emotional labor to describe the work performed by those whose jobs involve a high degree of personal contact and who are expected to produce an emotional state, such as pleasure, gratitude, or self-esteem, in the people with whom they deal.

All of the factors discussed relate to stress and the associated concept of burnout. Katherine Miller (1999) conceptualized workplace stress as a process in which certain aspects of the environment create strains on individuals, contributing to negative psychological, physiological, and organizational outcomes. The term burnout refers to the wearing out from the pressures of a situation or a job.

Conflict Episodes

Knowing what conflict is, why it happens, and in what context it occurs contributes to our understanding of conflict as a complex interaction of both individual and group perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and outcomes. Researchers describe these complex interactions as conflict episodes. Scholar Louis Pondy (1967) provided a particularly use-Ы understanding of episodes as five basic conflict stages: (1) la­tent conflict, (2) perceived conflict, (3) felt conflict, (4) manifest conflict, and (5) conflict aftermath. These stages are seen as influ­encing one another, and the total interaction determines whether the conflict is productive or counterproductive. The stages help us visualize conflict as a process and analyze specific conflicts from a process perspective.